I'm having some serious issues with my external hard drives. Every time I try to move or download files onto them, they keep disconnecting and become unresponsive. I've checked both drives, and there's no visible damage to either the drives or the USB ports on my computer. Although Windows says there's a problem with the drives and I've run chkdsk commands, it insists they are fine, which doesn't make sense given the issues I'm experiencing. I recently bought a new drive, but the same problems are occurring. My PC even crashes when I try to access the drives while downloading. It's frustrating, and I'm worried that my drives and the data on them might be corrupted. Can anyone help me figure out if the problem lies with my system instead? I'd love to resolve this without losing any data and without spending too much money if possible.
1 Answer
It sounds like the problem might be with your PC's USB ports, especially since you're having these issues with multiple drives. A good first step is to try connecting the drives to another computer to see if they work fine there. If they do, then your USB ports might be the culprit. You could also boot from a live Linux USB stick and test the drives on your system that way. If they work in Linux, then it’s likely a software issue on your machine, possibly related to your USB controller drivers. Quick tests can help you narrow down the problem!
I just tried my drive on an old laptop and it seems to work fine too! So yeah, it looks like the issue is definitely with my USB ports. Now, how do I go about fixing them?